


Jeopardy!

by stardust_in_the_wind



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Crack, Crack Treated Seriously, Fluff and Crack, Gen, Jeopardy!, Jon goes on Jeopardy!, Post-Canon except EVERYONE IS FINE, With his fancy beholding powers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-25
Updated: 2020-04-25
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:02:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23834311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardust_in_the_wind/pseuds/stardust_in_the_wind
Summary: Jon goes on Jeopardy!, and it goes about as well as one would expect.
Relationships: (both of these are mentioned but not the focus), Georgie Barker/Melanie King, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 86
Kudos: 693





	Jeopardy!

**Author's Note:**

> I'm American, so this is based on American Jeopardy! Don't ask why they're airing American Jeopardy! in the UK, just go with it. Also, all the questions here are real past Jeopardy! questions.

The apocalypse is over. The Institute is gone, and Jonah Magnus is dead – _properly_ , this time. They’d banished the Entities back to the space between, still feeding but safely away from the world.

Jon’s basically moved into Martin’s flat at this point; half his clothes are in one of Martin’s dresser drawers and he keeps a toothbrush in the bathroom. The scariest thing that happens is Jon sometimes involuntarily acting as occult Google, but other than that, life is blissfully free of the supernatural.

They’re curled up together on Martin’s sofa, idly flicking through the TV channels. Eventually, Martin settles on a trivia show, which Jon is fine with, as he isn’t really paying attention anyway.

“Florida town with a park named for Burt Reynolds?” the man onscreen asks. 

Jon doesn’t look up from where he’s playing with Martin’s hair as he answers. “Jupiter.”

“Did you actually know that, or…” Martin asks.

“No, I still have the entirety of Wikipedia in my head,” Jon says drily. 

“Really? Does it still hurt?”

“Not really. The information is fairly small, and not, you know, traumatizing.”

Martin hums. “Makes sense.”

“Siegfried discovered this woman asleep in a ring of fire?” the host continues.

“Brunhilde,” Jon mutters, just as the contestant asks, “Who is Brunhilde?” 

“Correct!”

“I’d like to see Elias’s face right now, watching you use your _very important_ Beholding powers for trivia,” Martin jokes. 

“He’d probably want to murder me with a pipe.” Jon laughs. 

“Nine-letter French term for a skilled storyteller?”

“Raconteur,” Jon says, with an exaggerated and _horrendous_ French accent. Martin dissolves into giggles. 

~~~~~

Jon only takes the _Jeopardy!_ test as a joke (and maybe because he was a little bit curious), but somehow he gets selected to participate in an episode. He picks nervously at the edge of his sweater. 

“Okay, practice run!” someone calls. “Everyone press your buzzers!” All the buzzers work. “Great, now Alex will ask you a few questions, get you familiar with the format.”

As if on cue, Alex walks over to the clue board. He looks exactly the same in person. Almost uncannily so. 

“Congratulations on making it on the show!” he says cheerily. “Let’s start with those practice questions. A musical direction to play quickly?”

Jon jams his finger onto the buzzer. “Allegro.”

“That’s correct, but you need to answer in the form of a question.”

“Oh, I see. So I’d say ‘What is allegro?’.”

“Yeah, just like that. Next! A person who sets glass in window frames?”

~~~~~

“Alright, we’re starting in three! Two! One!”

The theme music blares from the speakers, and Alex steps out to greet the crowd. “Hi, I’m Alex Trebek, and you’re watching _Jeopardy!_ Let’s meet our contestants!”

Jon hasn’t prepared anything, and he unconsciously begins fidgeting with the edge of his sweater again. 

“Where are you from, Jon?”

An easy one, thank goodness. “London.”

“Oh, an international contestant! And what do you do in London?”

“I’m, uh….” What is he supposed to say? An all-seeing eldritch fear monster? “I’m an archivist.”

“That’s very interesting! Well, good luck today, Jon.” And then he mercifully moves on to the next person. Jon almost laughs at the thought that the hardest questions for him to answer are going to be these ones. He takes a breath, and pulls his focus towards the ocean of information in his head.

“I’ll take ‘Beginning with K’ for $200, please,” the woman going first says confidently.

“A boarding house for beagles or borzois?”

Jon is first at the buzzer. “What is a kennel?”

Alex’s expression breaks momentarily from its cheery mask. “A building where you keep dogs,” he says slowly, eyes not leaving Jon’s. After a moment, he blinks hard. “Sorry about that. You’re correct.”

So apparently that’s a side effect of using his remaining Beholding powers. 

Alex is looking at him expectantly, and Jon realizes it’s his turn to choose the question. “Ah, I’ll take Symbology for $200.”

“In dentistry charts, the letter "M" symbolizes this major tooth type?”

“What is a molar?”

“A grinding tooth at the back of a mammal's mouth,” Alex answers immediately. 

He tried his best to keep the Compulsion out of his voice, he really did. But it seems like he can either use all of his Archivist powers, or none at all. The Beholding apparently isn’t even good for _Jeopardy!_ questions. Why anyone would actually _want_ to serve it, Jon doesn’t know. 

~~~~~

At long last, they finish both Jeopardy and Double Jeopardy, and there’s no more clues to be answered verbally. Alex looks as relieved as Jon feels. 

“It’s time for Final Jeopardy! Please read the projected clue, and you have one minute to write down your answers.” Once again, the signature music blares over the speakers.

Jon scrawls down an arbitrary bet along with “What is Ascension Island?”

He’s the only one to get it right. 

“Congratulations, Jon, you’ve won _Jeopardy!_ ”

~~~~~

Georgie is taking a well-deserved night off after spending the day researching and outlining for a new _What the Ghost?_ episode. She flops down on the couch and turns on the TV, only to hear a _very_ familiar voice saying, “What is an aquifer?” The Admiral starts meowing loudly at the screen. 

“A geological formation conducting ground water,” the host responds blankly. “I mean, that’s correct.”

She shakes her head, to be sure she’s seeing correctly. It can’t be him, right? He’d never. But no, that very much is _Jonathan Sims_ , the person least likely to agree to being on a TV show that she’s ever met, on a _game show_. And really enthusiastic about it, for some reason. 

“Melanie, you’ve got to listen to this,” she calls. “Jon’s on _Jeopardy!_ ”

“You’re kidding!”

“I’m completely serious, listen!”

“From the Latin for "hoof", it's any hoofed mammal?” the host asks. 

“What is an ungulate?” Jon bursts out, not a second later. The Admiral meows again. 

“A hoofed mammal… uh, that’s correct.”

“ _No_ ,” Melanie breathes. “We’re going to give him so much shit for this later.”

“Oh, absolutely.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed! Let me know what you think in the comments  
> or say hi on [tumblr](https://stardust-in-the-wind.tumblr.com)


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